Every now and then, I take out the glossy, red Samsung point-and-shoot I have living in the top drawer in my bedroom. I knew it’d end up being the last of its kind I’d end up buying, and it remains one of the few items I have from an era when designers were bold in ways we perhaps don’t experience anymore.
As someone born in the 90s, you can then imagine the elation I felt when I stumbled across a Twitter account dedicated to the forgotten Y2K styles, attitude and fashion of the 90s and early 00s. Evan Collins and Froyo Tam, two designers based on the American west coast, are cataloguing these for all to see, with images extracted from books, magazines, mass-produced CDs and product exhibitions, creating a formal taxonomy all designers can use. I had to get in touch. During one moment in our group Skype call with them, I casually mention how even the graphical work and typography of old computer component packaging was so much more flamboyant than it is now.
“Yeah, we definitely explore these types of collateral. It’s very much about what people purchase, but it doesn’t mean it’s highbrow,” says Tam, who has also produced events focussing on digital photography. Collins talks about these ubiquitous designs too. “Because it wasn’t highbrow, it just wasn’t tracked as well. They’re not gonna publish as many books on it, like how the high art world is pretty well documented.” He goes to the heart of the issue of preservation, saying, “That disposability led it to get a little bit lost, and that’s where finding these old books is interesting.”
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk – Official Trailer Watch on YouTube
Thankfully, video games are much more difficult to lose, even if some companies are reducing access to older libraries. The most obvious example of unabashed Y2K aesthetics in the medium is Jet Set Radio and its sequel. The confident attitude its characters exude in its urban setting is something that’s, strangely, a rarity now, even after discounting the obvious unique visual style it possesses. Collins is aware of the game’s lasting influence. “A lot of the revival going on with Y2K is pulling from some of those sort of really extreme looks that were in video games like that. Even in the sequel from 2002, they’re kind of interplaying with each other and then affecting the revival later on, which is pretty interesting.” Tam laments the death of FRUiTS, a fashion magazine that ended its 20 year run in 2017, whose influence she detects in such titles. “Harajuku [in Japan] is known for her street fashion, and that’s where most of the FRUiTS photos came from. That particular streetwear scene from the late 90s isn’t as prominent these days.”
1 of 3 Caption Attribution Fashion from FRUiTS.
Of the many images the duo have disseminated in recent years, the extreme look found in a 1996 copy of the now-ceased Japanese magazine CUTiE shows how the inspiration for something like Jet Set Radio came to be.
‘Technology Sports Remix’ fashion photoshoot in CUTiE Magazine (Japan, 1996)
Thanks again to Anthony10000000 on Tumblr for these scans! pic.twitter.com/YKEAA6KzYB
— Y2K Aesthetic Institute 💽 (@y2k_aesthetic) January 17, 2021
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This isn’t far-fetched considering how much of a rarity the internet was in the mid-90s. Maybe it’s highly possible, given how designer Kate Willaert posed a complementary theory of Shigeru Miyamoto using a cover image from Popeye, a Japanese men’s fashion magazine, as the potential inspiration for the Super Mario character. Ideas travel.